Robert Lyndon - Imperial Fire

The captured youth struggled to break loose. The man held him easily and his face took on a rapt expression. The youth whined. His captor drew him forward so they were standing eye to eye, and then with a beatific expression, like one lifting his eyes to a saint in exaltation, he drew back his head and butted the youth full in the face with a sound like a hard-fired pot cracking. When he let go, his victim dropped as if he’d been poleaxed and writhed about with blood squirting through his splayed hands.

Lucas was dimly aware of other people running towards him. He saw a young girl, a statuesque woman who clutched her hands to her throat and called to a steepling figure in clerical grey who bent over Lucas so that his familiar face blotted out everything else. The last thing Lucas remembered was hands lifting him and a jagged tearing in his chest as something vital parted.

He woke in lamplight, his head bursting. The moment he regained consciousness, he vomited. Hands guided a bowl under his mouth. He sank back. Figures drifted in and out. The tall red-headed lady who stared down at him without sympathy. The cleric from the ship who felt his pulse and peered into his eyes. A young man who covered his mouth when he saw the damage inflicted on Lucas’s face. And then — he might have dreamed it — a tall grim man who studied him without expression before turning away. Lucas’s own gaze was blank, the world spinning away down a tunnel, but in a last moment of lucidity, he knew that at long last he’d found what he’d come looking for.

That’s him. Vallon, properly known as Guy de Crion. My father. The man who murdered my mother and brought ruin and death on my family.

Lucas woke propped against pillows, his skull bandaged, nose taped, one hand splinted, vision reduced to one slitted eye. Light from a shuttered window diffused through the small bare room. A figure stood at the end of the bed, studying him with forensic detachment. It was the youth who’d helped carry him inside.

‘Are you awake?’

Lucas blinked.

‘Can you speak?’

Lucas unstuck his lips and made a swallowing sound.

The youth poured a beaker of water and held it to Lucas’s mouth. Most of the contents dribbled down his chin. The youth set down the vessel. ‘Your head’s swollen to twice its normal size,’ he said. ‘Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you.’

Lucas dabbed at his face. A grating pain in his side made him gasp.

‘That’s your ribs. Two of them are broken. So is your nose and one of your fingers. The wound in your scalp required sixteen stitches. Master Hero also put two stitches in your lip. You were unconscious and didn’t feel a thing.’

‘Where am I?’

‘The gatehouse of General Vallon’s residence.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘Two days. You’ve been asleep most of that time. What’s your name?’

‘Lucas.’

‘I’m Aiken, Vallon’s son.’

Lucas squinted up, considering this claim. So far as he could tell, he and Aiken were about the same age. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘Not his real son. Vallon adopted me after my father died.’ Aiken sat on the edge of the bed, his movements almost prim. ‘What brought you here?’

‘I came east to join the Byzantine army.’

‘I meant, what led you to Vallon’s house? Wulfstan said you spoke the general’s name.’

‘I met a Frankish veteran in a taverna. When I told him I was from Aquitaine, he suggested I join Vallon’s regiment.’

The bed creaked as Aiken rose. ‘I don’t expect the general will recruit someone who gets beaten up on his first day in Constantinople.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s a general. What do you think he’s like?’

Lucas took a risk. ‘The veteran said that Vallon fled from France after being condemned as an outlaw.’

‘Did he? If I were you, I’d keep such slanders to yourself.’

Aiken closed the door behind him. With geriatric slowness, Lucas extended a hand to the water. When he’d drunk, he lay back considering his situation. Since leaving France, he’d rehearsed his confrontation with Vallon countless times, imagining the shock on the man’s face when he told him he was his son. Sometimes he got no further than that before plunging a sword into Vallon’s belly — plunging it in time after time. That’s for my mother, and that’s for my brother, and that’s for my sister. And this last one’s for me.

Now, though, wasn’t the time to exact revenge. He wanted to be in full health so that he could savour every detail. Time would season the dish, and he had plenty of time. Vallon had no idea that he was his son. No one did. Wait and learn and use the knowledge to inflict maximum pain. Settling into sleep, Lucas had an intimation that Aiken might prove to be a useful lever. Brief though their conversation had been, Lucas already hated him.

Awful dreams chased each other. Lucas started out of one smothering nightmare with a cry to find someone sponging his brow.

‘Hush,’ said Hero. ‘Your body and soul are at war and we must let them make peace.’ He held an aromatic pad under Lucas’s nose. ‘Do you remember me?’

Hero’s volatile physic chased away the demons in Lucas’s skull. He coughed and snorted.

‘If you’d been less stiff-necked, you would have spared yourself a lot of trouble and a great deal of pain.’

‘I’m sorry I rebuffed you on the boat.’

‘I don’t blame you for being wary of strangers. How are you feeling?’

‘About how you’d expect.’

Hero took Lucas’s pulse, examined his uncovered eye, listened to his chest. ‘How’s your vision?’

‘I can see you.’

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘One.’

‘And now?’

‘Four. You must be a physician?’

‘Fortunately for you, I am.’ Hero slid an arm under Lucas’s shoulder and held a bitter infusion to his lips. ‘Swallow it.’

Lucas forced it down, shuddering at the taste.

Hero lowered him back onto the pillows. ‘Aiken says you’re called Lucas.’

‘Lucas of Osse.’

‘It didn’t take long for you to get into trouble, did it? More than once, it seems. Those Venetian louts didn’t inflict your head wound.’

‘I was attacked by thieves the night before.’

‘How strange that only a day after we spoke, you ended up at the house of the very man to whom I was going to offer you an introduction.’

‘A veteran I ran into — ’

‘I know. Lucas told me. It’s still a remarkable coincidence.’

Lucas lay rigid under Hero’s gaze and didn’t relax until the physician rose.

‘You’ll have your chance to put your request to General Vallon tomorrow,’ Hero said. ‘Good night.’

Lucas’s heart thumped. ‘Before you go, sir, can I ask you something?’

Hero stopped with his hand on the latch.

Lucas wriggled into a semi-upright position. ‘How did you become acquainted with Vallon?’

Hero laughed. ‘That would take all night to tell and you’d be better off spending the time in sleep.’

‘I’m not tired.’

Hero returned and sat at the foot of the bed. ‘Nine years ago, when I was still a student, I was appointed travelling companion to a Byzantine diplomat carrying a ransom demand to the family of a Norman knight whose son had been captured at Manzikert.’

‘I’ve heard of that battle.’

‘My master died in the Alps and I would have turned back if I hadn’t met Vallon. He was travelling south, intending to take service with the Varangian Guard.’

‘Why? I mean, what made him leave France?’

‘What’s that to you?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘It’s not your place to wonder about the man who gave you house space.’ After a moment’s wary contemplation, Hero continued. ‘Vallon agreed to accompany me to the Norman knight’s estate in Northumbria, where we delivered the ransom terms. I can still remember them: “four white gyrfalcons as pale as a virgin’s breasts or the first snows of winter”.’